Samsung has moved to embed artificial intelligence even more deeply into its mobile devices, with new AI-enabled ear buds and smartphones.
The South Korean mobile-maker also unveiled new wearables at its latest Unpacked event, including the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch 7 Ultra, and the upcoming Galaxy Ring, which is expected to launch in Ireland later in the year.
Samsung’s Galaxy Ring puts it in competition with wearables such as Oura, measuring health markers such as activity sleep and temperature, the latter enabling menstrual cycle tracking.
The Ring, which will cost €459, will be available in nine sizes and a three colours: silver, black and gold.
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The company also doubled down on its artificial intelligence, Galaxy AI, which it introduced earlier this year with its flagship Galaxy S24 series of devices. The new foldable smartphones, the Z Flip 6 and the Z Fold 6, will also come with Galaxy AI built in.
“Everything is underpinned by Galaxy AI, which has been a contributor to the biggest launch of our lives,” said Samsung Ireland’s head of product management Quentin Doran O’Reilly. “It’s all coming together to create something genuinely exciting.”
The new Fold has some improvements over last year’s device, with Samsung making it lighter, improving the screen brightness and including a new Snapdragon chip. The Fold runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform for Galaxy, which is optimised for AI use.
Among the AI features on the phones is Note Assist, which offers translation, summaries, and auto formatting, alongside an embedded transcript feature that summarises voice recordings.
The Composer feature will suggest text for email and supported social media apps, analysing previous posts to better reflect the user’s tone. Circle to Search brings instant search results through Google’s Gemini AI, while the Interpreter translator, meanwhile, helps facilitate communication, with a conversation mode that displays translations on both the inside and cover screen of the Fold, and one-way translation when needed.
Samsung said it would extend the Live Translate feature, which translates calls on device in real-time, to third-party calling apps.
Samsung’s AI features are not limited to the newest devices, however, with the company extending them to older phones in its line-up. Mr Doran O’Reilly said it was a recognition that people were hanging on to their phones for longer – up to three years – and often passing them on to others.
“These are services and features that we want all our users to have access to more as many as possible devices that will support it,” he said. “So that’s why we have pushed that capability down to all those devices.”
Samsung has also extended support for its smartphones to seven years of both operating system and security updates, ensuring they last longer.
The Fold 6 will cost from €2,059 sim-free, while the Flip 6 will start at €1,239.
The Galaxy Buds3 and Buds3 Pro earbuds expand the company’s audio line-up, with the buds bringing additional AI features such as the ability to translate audio in real time, directly to your ears.
Although the ear buds are widely compatible with Android smartphones, some of the more advanced features will be reserved for use with Galaxy devices, including the Live Translate feature.
The Watch Ultra, meanwhile, is aimed at more serious sports enthusiasts, with dual GPS to improve accuracy and the ability to withstand more extreme conditions. It will go head to head with rivals such as Apple Watch Ultra and the Garmin Fenix range.
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